Real IRA men have terms reduced

Three Real IRA men from County Louth arrested in Slovakia after an elaborate MI5 sting operation have had their jail sentences reduced by two years.

Fintan O'Farrell, 41, Declan Rafferty, 44, and Michael McDonald, 46, were caught when MI5 officers posed as Iraqi intelligence agents and arms dealers.

They were jailed in May 2002; however, that sentence was reduced from 30 years to 28 years by the Court of Appeal.

The judge said the sentence was being reduced in light of their guilty plea.

Lord Justice Hooper, sitting with two other judges, said the court was reducing the length of the jail terms handed down by a judge at Woolwich Crown Court in south London "not without some reluctance".

"We have concluded, not without some reluctance, that a reduction of 1/5th was appropriate to reflect the plea (of guilty) and we therefore reduce the sentence from one of 30 years' imprisonment to one of 28 years' imprisonment," he said.

Evidence against them was obtained during an undercover operation in 2001 when officers taped and filmed conversations at an Arab restaurant in a Slovak spa resort.

At one meeting the men wrote down their shopping list - 5,000kg of plastic explosives, 2,000 detonators, 200 rocket-propelled grenades and 500 handguns - on a paper napkin.

Earlier this week, the same judges dismissed a bid brought by the three to challenge their convictions.

They had pleaded guilty to conspiring to cause explosions and other charges under the Terrorism Act, following an unsuccessful application to the trial judge to have the proceedings against them halted as an "abuse of process".

The sole ground of appeal to their conviction challenge was a submission that the judge at their initial trial was wrong not to accede to the defence's submission that proceedings against the three should be stayed as an abuse of process because they had been "unlawfully extradited from Slovakia".

However, the Court of Appeal ruled that the judge had been entitled to reach the conclusion he did.